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Startups & Software - Simple, Open and Pragmatic.Tue, 20 Oct 2015 15:14:45 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.3.18spacebughttps://feedburner.google.comProgrammers guide to weight losshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/spacebug/~3/OYTo8PFHAw4/
http://spacebug.com/programmers-guide-to-weight-loss/#commentsTue, 13 Oct 2015 01:34:13 +0000http://spacebug.com/?p=803I lost 44 pounds in the last 6 months. I did it without a diet or going hungry. I used basic methods that are known to most programmers for optimizing my behavior.

Here is a short guide to optimizing yourself into losing weight.

Will power == CPU cycles

This is one of ourunderlying assumptions: You want to spend as little will power as you possibly can, when making a decision about your eating choices. The more will power you spend, the less likely you are to succeed with losing weight.
Will power, like CPU cycles, is a limited resource, if every day you need to spend a lot of it in order to keep your weight, you will always fail at one point or onother. Not only that, will power is a shared resource – so if you spend it on going to the gym, you have less for other things.

The common diet algorithm
The commonly used diet algorithm looks something like this:

Well apparently, if you have static final variables (yes, contradiction in terms) you do not need to spend will power. This is the main hack of our minds – If you chose not to eat something because you hate it, or you are allergic to it, or it is against your religion, then you do not need to spend will power as you would with a dynamic type diet.

I spent zero will power to maintain my eating habits, I chose things I can do without and took them away. I eat food I love (meat, fish, veggies, cheeses) and never go hungry. I do not second guess myself and never spend will power. My programming is in the static final identity level.

This way I never run into this:

And I work for Google

Final optimization – walking meetings

We all have 1:1 meetings, sync meeting and other “useful” meetings in our life – I turned most of my meetings into walking meeting. benefits include: no presentations, more effective outcomes, and usually shorter meetings.

Simply put:

Conclusion

Moving our preferences to the identity level, declaring things as final, changes our will spend and makes our choices easier. You still need to have conviction, but you are not second guessing yourself all the time.

]]>http://spacebug.com/programmers-guide-to-weight-loss/feed/4http://spacebug.com/programmers-guide-to-weight-loss/How to: Use Slack API to Get Notification When Something Happens in your App/Sitehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/spacebug/~3/9AydAQZl1Cs/
http://spacebug.com/how-to-use-slack-api-to-get-notification-when-something-happens-in-your-appsite/#commentsWed, 16 Sep 2015 20:32:39 +0000http://spacebug.com/?p=790Most Startups use Slack these days to communicate. They also integrate Jira, Asana and other tools into Slack to improve the communication and integration between the team members. But what if you want to get a notification when a user registers to your site or app, when a user makes a payment or a complaint. Wouldn’t it be cool to integrate your business events with Slack? I found it very useful, and here is how I did it:

Step 1 – Go to the Slack API page and choose your integration method – There are a lot of supported use cases and methods of integration. I chose the Incoming Webhooks as I wanted to post on Slack every time a user registered to my service.

Step 2 – Setup your integration – to set up an Incoming Webhook integration, click on the Set up an incoming webhook integration and pick the channel you want to publish to:

Note that at the time of this article, if you choose to create a new channel you will need to refresh the page to actually see the channel you have just created. Once you have chosen a channel click on the “Add Incoming WebHooks Integration”. You will get to a page that will give you the URL and keys needed to post to that channel as well as other useful customization.

I ran the code and got a “ok” ack value, and was pleasantly surprised to get a new notification in my slack app:

Now me and my team get a notification on every user that joins our service! cha-ching!

]]>http://spacebug.com/how-to-use-slack-api-to-get-notification-when-something-happens-in-your-appsite/feed/0http://spacebug.com/how-to-use-slack-api-to-get-notification-when-something-happens-in-your-appsite/Always Be Communicatinghttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/spacebug/~3/Mr93C4fhSAk/
http://spacebug.com/always-be-communicating/#commentsWed, 18 Feb 2015 05:29:55 +0000http://spacebug.com/?p=781As Startup founders we have a lot of audiences: our investors, our employees, our clients, and our partners. Communicating with them is not always intuitive and easy, but it is always critical to the success of our Startup.

Communication is important, it is the root of our society, the pillar of any successful relationship. It helps us set expectations and pass information, yet in many cases it is neglected by early stage founders and it is considered as “overhead” or “burden”.

Why do we see over-communication as a burden?

As humans we make a lot of assumptions – we assume our counterpart/audience is focused, attentive, and ready to communicate, we assume certain level of knowledge, we assume that there are no cultural or language barriers, we assume that they get that “no news is good news”, we assume that they read the memo and remember the last meeting. All these assumptions are usually wrong.

Tips for effective communication:

1) Use written communication to backup and solidify verbal conversations.

2) Provide periodic updates – people like habits, this gives them the comfort of expecting your update.

3) Recap/Repeat important points – “as discussed, it is important for us to…..”.

4) In extreme cases use this – “Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them”.

5) Provide the audience the ability to ask questions and provide feedback.

6) Fine tune your communication to the audience – VCs like it short and backed by numbers, users might like it friendly and humoristic, your employees might want you to be open and transparent, but your partners want to get only the executive summary.

7) Have an executive summary (check out tl;dr) be mindful of your audience attention span and time.

Insider tip:

This advice is relevant for startup founders as well as managers in big enterprises. I found communication to be super important in all the big enterprises I worked for.

A few weeks ago I attended a panel with a top executive from HP and an executive from Disney. There were a lot of questions from the audience about how can startups work with big corporates. We tried to explain our view of things and in this article I will try to capture the insights from the panel:

Do’s

Be specific – Vague agenda and targets lead to lost meeting. We see a lot of companies “seeking cooperation” but when you drill down, they do not really know what they are looking for when they say that.

Be relevant – Know the role of the person you are meeting and discuss things that matter to them. Do not seek BizDev with a sales person or M&A with an engineer.

Be knowledgeable – People working in big corporates expect you to know your business if you plan to work with them. If you are not knowledgeable in your field you are a liability more than a value.

Think “what’s in it for the corporate” – know what is the hot topic in the company you are meeting, try to see how your startup can help them drive their current agenda.

Be prepared – If the corporate person likes your startup, they will need to “sell” you internally, be prepared with one-pager, data sheets and proposals that you can share to make their life easer.

Don’ts

Don’t assume subject matter expertise – In some cases the corporate person you are meeting is not as savvy in your technology as you are. This is particularly true if you are dealing with a corporate who’s main business is not technology.

Do not be arrogant – claiming that “Our startup will fix what is broken in your offering” will lead you nowhere.

Do not bombard – Some startups send emails to 10 contacts within the big company – that leads to internal noise and can backfire.

Do not seek the highest ranking person to talk to – Common mistake by startups is to seek to talk to “the guy in charge”. Seeking a meeting with a super high ranking person in a big company could be as ineffective as talking to a too low ranking person.

Do not forget to followup – Be proactive and followup on meetings, take action items and show the corporate that you can follow through on your word. Life in the corporate is hectic and balls are dropped from time to time, followup mitigates the risk of your meeting to be forgotten.

Insider tip shared from one of the panelists:

Changing standard legal documents such as NDAs is extremely hard, time consuming, and expensive in big companies. Remember that when considering asking the corporates to change their standards.

Insider tip #2:

Check if the cooperation you seek can be achieved via standard API, platform, or infrastructure that corporate is offering – remember, standard engagement is much easier and intuitive for big companies.

Conclusion:

Working with big corporates is very much like surfing the waves – hard work, needs a lot of skill, but when done right – can take you a very long way.

Enjoy the ride.

]]>http://spacebug.com/startups-dos-and-donts-of-working-with-big-corporates/feed/1http://spacebug.com/startups-dos-and-donts-of-working-with-big-corporates/5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Coming to Silicon Valleyhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/spacebug/~3/Gq4uxz_PMKs/
http://spacebug.com/mistakes-entrepreneurs-make-when-coming-to-the-silicon-valley/#commentsTue, 19 Aug 2014 16:59:19 +0000http://spacebug.com/?p=753Many entrepreneurs from all over the world flock to Silicon Valley – some are seeking finance, others partnerships, and many feel their startup has a better chance of being successful just by being here in the startup capital. I was once told by a friend “in the same way artists used to go to Paris for a few years to absorb the spirit, I come to silicon valley with my startup”.

Many foreign startup founders do very well in Silicon Valley, but as I meet a lot of startups that come here, I find that there are some repetitive mistakes that founders make when coming here.

Here is an unsorted collection of these mistakes:

1) Come for a very short visit expecting to raise money or close deals

Like in many aspects in life, relationships are very important. I see founders go to a first meeting with a Venture Capital and say “We are here for the week and are seeking to raise 2M$”.I tell these entrepreneurs that what they did is like to go to a bar, sit next to a person and ask her/him to marry you… It doesn’t work that way. Both in partnership and in capital you need to build relationship and trust, and that takes weeks and months, not days.

2) No knowledge of local competition and market needs

Many founders know their own markets very well, but that is less relevant when going out of your local market and coming to the Silicon Valley – Saying “Non of our competitors in [Latvia/India/Brazil/XYZ] have our features” does not mean a lot if a Silicon-Valley-based competitor does everything your startup does. Investors and partners here want to see locally relevant advantage (and many times Global).

3) Language issues and Spelling mistakes in one pager and presentations

“Here is our site, it is still in French right now but you can get the feeling of our solution” – well, not really, if you take the time to have an english version that would be much better.

Note that Americans will be very tolerant when you speak to them with a deep accent or make mistakes while you present your idea. They have very little tolerance for spelling mistakes in presentations and one pagers. Take the time to have someone with perfect English go over everything you send.

4) Misunderstanding the culture

When someone you meet in the Valley says something like “This is very interesting, we will get back to you” that should be translated to “Not really interested” in other cultures. Some entrepreneurs do not get the subtle tone or are not able to read between the lines, they are surprised that that person does not get back to them.

5) Wasting time with non-relevant meetings

This is common in many places but very important when you have no time to spare, such as visiting the Silicon Valley for a short duration. Many people will not tell you that the meeting you want to have is not relevant or that they can not help you. A lot of time is wasted on unnecessary meetings. Getting the meeting is not the end game, a good outcome of the meeting is, so choose your meetings wisely.

Insider tip –

When you are sending an email to someone, it is important to send it at a time that is convenient to them. For example: I used to send VCs in the valley my update emails on Monday morning at 9AM PST in order to maximize readership.

Conclusion

There are a lot of opportunities and a rich startup environment in Silicon Valley. Some entrepreneurs make very simple mistakes that can be very easily corrected. Understanding these mistakes, and avoiding them, will save you a lot of headaches, frustration, time and money.

]]>http://spacebug.com/mistakes-entrepreneurs-make-when-coming-to-the-silicon-valley/feed/1http://spacebug.com/mistakes-entrepreneurs-make-when-coming-to-the-silicon-valley/Google Startup Launch Programhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/spacebug/~3/95uIewkQyVk/
http://spacebug.com/google-startup-launch-program/#commentsSat, 09 Aug 2014 04:42:56 +0000http://spacebug.com/?p=7466 Months ago I have accepted an offer by Google to lead a new Global Startup Outreach program out of our offices in the Silicon Valley.

My team’s mission is to help startups become successful over Google and open source technologies and to enable product feedback and communication. We basically want to seed startup innovation in areas where entrepreneurship is a foreign notion, foster entrepreneurship communities, and help startups from the idea stage to growth stages to design, develop and distribute their innovation.

We have started creating online content and training, online community, run events in the UK, Brazil, USA, Tel Aviv, Berlin and other locations and pilot devices libraries in selected location, we are also looking to work with great startup around the world.

Google Startup event in Athens

This is an amazing opportunity to change the world and make it better – me and my team feel honored and waking everyday feeling lucky knowing we have this incredible mission.

I plan to open a new category about startups in this blog and write about startups and entrepreneurship around the world.

]]>http://spacebug.com/google-startup-launch-program/feed/0http://spacebug.com/google-startup-launch-program/Google’s Developer Relations Vs. Microsoft’s Developer And Platform Evangelismhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/spacebug/~3/-vNTnYXyvIY/
http://spacebug.com/googles-developer-relations-vs-microsofts-developer-and-platform-evangelism/#commentsTue, 07 Aug 2012 22:45:19 +0000http://spacebug.com/?p=691It has been a year since I joined Google as a regional PM for Developer Relations. Looking back, it has been an amazing year – a rollercoaster of activities with startups, developers, and entrepreneurs worldwide. Before Google I worked for a couple of years in Microsoft’s Developer And Platform Evangelism – It was a very interesting experience and I have learned a lot from these years at Microsoft.

It is time now to make the comparison very few people can make, speaking from personal experience – Google’s Developer Relations Vs. Microsoft’s Developer And Platform Evangelism:

MS Vs Google

Getting in – Interviews

Both Microsoft and Google have very strict vetting process and both rather miss a good candidate than let a bad one in. Both Microsoft and Google have between 6 and 12 interviews assessing both technical and business abilities.

Still, it is harder to get into Google – In Google you are interviewed by your hiring manager, potential peers and all relevent interfaces. If one of them say “haaaa, I don’t know…” you will probably not getting the job, even if the hiring manager loves you. In Microsoft the hiring manager has much more influence, in my experience, to get someone in even if some of his interviews did not go perfectly. In Microsoft, I learned that one of my peers did not think I was the right person for the job (only after my first public session, he came by to say he though so before, and was proven wrong) if this happened in Google, I wouldn’t have gotten the job.

Getting in – on-boarding

Both Microsoft and Google have a pretty solid on-boarding process.

Microsoft has tones of online mandatory courses you have to take in the first few weeks. Every course is interactive and at the end there is an online test. Most of the content is horribly boring – Policy, Products, Sales, Internal systems. The tests at the end are super easy and you can take them as many times as you like… Not really challenging and rarely useful. The positive things I remember about my on-boarding at Microsoft was that I got flowers from the company a week before I joined, and that everything was ready and dandy when I came in.

Google on-boarding feels a little more like a startup. You get a lot of “Welcome to the team” emails, with funny and sometime internal jokes, that you only understand days after. You are called a “Nooglers” for the first few weeks – saying “Hi, I am Amir and I have a Noogler question” was very common for me in the first days. Most of the training is in classes and content varies – some super interesting and super technical, and some less interesting like HR processes. No tests If you do not get it, you will soon find out when you start your job.

Managers

I had the pleasure to have great managers in Microsoft and in Google. Both were mentors and enablers in the best way possible. In Google there are things like non-managerial bonus – peers can give you bonuses and asses you as well. This helps employees to align strategies without the need of managers to intervene. Microsoft has peer evaluation but to a lesser extent.

Team

I had amazing teams both in Microsoft and in Google. The team spirit in Microsoft seems more conservative, if you have a great idea some people will first think if it is aligned with their targets before helping you. From my experience, it is much easier to experiment in Google than it was in Microsoft – If you have a crazy idea, just do it, and people will help you. In general it is more common to experiment in my role in Google than in Microsoft.

Work load

I work harder in Google. We are a smaller team both locally and globally – you want to achieve more with your resources so you work harder. I am not asked to work harder, my manager tells me to work less, but I just feel more productive and want to do more.

Sales Vs. Eng

Microsoft’s Developer And Platform is under sales – Google’s Developer Relations is under engineering. This is the most important differentiator in my experience. In Google I do not need to sell anything, I am totally aligned with the developers and startups I work and meet everyday. I do not think “what do I need to sell to them”,I do not have a quota, I do not have a number hanging over my head. This makes me very happy.

Being in Eng also means I am in the same group as the developers that write the code. It is much easier to open bugs, go to eng meetings or event call some one if you are in the same org as he is. Google Developer Relations has much more interactions with the product team than Microsoft Evangelists.

Centralised Vs. Distributed

Microsoft is very centralised and Google is very distributive by comparison. In Microsoft most decisions are made in Redmond. There is a concept of field and corp – If you are in the field you need to execute, if you in the corp you need to build, design, and strategize. In Google I am able to build and run a global program from a distributed office (Not in the USA). It is super common in Google to go into any office, anywhere in the world and sit at a free desk and start to work. You feel at home anywhere in the world. Microsoft gives Corp people a company credit card – Google gives a company credit card to anyone in the company, no matter where they are.

Flying arrangement in Microsoft are every ordered and arranged by internal team – in google you need to buy your own ticket and book your own hotel – this takes time to adjust

Bottom line

Both companies are amazing – both have changed the world and the way we live. Working for both companies was an honor and a privilege. I am happy I have worked in Microsoft, and super happy I was asked to move to Google. At the end of the day, I feel more creative and empowered at Google. It is more challenging, exciting, and fun to work with startups, which are the bread and butter of Google, rather than enterprises which are the bread and butter of Microsoft.

All this comes from my personal experience and might not be true in general or for other people. This reflects my personal opinion and not any company or organisation. Everything I covered is public information that can be found in other resources on the web. No secrets, just my truth

]]>http://spacebug.com/googles-developer-relations-vs-microsofts-developer-and-platform-evangelism/feed/0http://spacebug.com/googles-developer-relations-vs-microsofts-developer-and-platform-evangelism/The World First Ever HTML5 Advertisementhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/spacebug/~3/1cmIWRHTSxU/
http://spacebug.com/the-world-first-html5-dvertisement/#commentsMon, 26 Sep 2011 20:04:56 +0000http://spacebug.com/?p=676We all love new technology, its event better when it is open and standard. But getting your feet wet and actually using the new technology? and in production? and where there is money involved? that is totally a different matter…

Last week I started advertising a big developer event we are holding in November – a countdown clock that counts the seconds till Google Developer Day . We considered a Flash ad like we are all used to, but our marketing team though it would be cool to have HTML5 ad…

I am a little a shamed to say that at first I objected, saying that HTML5 is still not fully supported by all browsers. After much deliberation we decided it was worth the extra budget to serve HTML5 for browsers that support it and Flash Ad to deprecated browsers. The reports from the publisher is that this HTML5 ad beats all Flash ads CTR. This is something worth investigating – is HTML5 ads perform better than Flash ads?

So get ready – Here is the first world HTML5 ad (click to enlarge) –

For the next few days you would be able to view it (with Firefox and Chrome) here.

]]>http://spacebug.com/the-world-first-html5-dvertisement/feed/0http://spacebug.com/the-world-first-html5-dvertisement/Gracefully Detect Old Browsers and Fallback from HTML5http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/spacebug/~3/y6jaYJ7x2MA/
http://spacebug.com/gracefully-detect-old-browsers-and-fallback-from-html5/#commentsWed, 14 Sep 2011 22:04:41 +0000http://spacebug.com/?p=665HTML5 rocks! It even says so in this (highly recommended) great web tutorial, but there are still a lot of browsers out there, that still do not support HTML5, or some of it’s features.

First, What is HTML5?

Wikipedia defines HTM5 – HTML5 is a language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web, a core technology of the Internet. It is the fifth revision of the HTML standard (created in 1990 and standardized as HTML4 as of 1997[1]) and as of September 2011 is still under development. Its core aims have been to improve the language with support for the latest multimedia while keeping it easily readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devices (web browsers, parsers, etc.). HTML5 is intended to subsume not only HTML4, but XHTML1 and DOM2HTML (particularly JavaScript) as well.

How do I find out which features are supported in each browser?

HTML5Rocks keeps track for each features support in each browser another cool site to check would be caniuse.

Now, the really issue is what do you do at run-time? how do you gracefully fallback when there is no support for the great feature you have implemented using HTML5.

There are two way to detect and fallback from HTML5, the right way, and the wrong way

So here they are:

WRONG WAY – On the server-side, check the User Agent header and serve different pages based on the user agent header… Not recommended – first, there a lot of User Agents, second, this is a very buggy approach because headers change and are not deterministic (FF can easily send IE headers).

RIGHT WAY – Use JavaScript to detect when there is no support for a HTML5 feature (AKA object detection) here is an example:

]]>http://spacebug.com/gracefully-detect-old-browsers-and-fallback-from-html5/feed/1http://spacebug.com/gracefully-detect-old-browsers-and-fallback-from-html5/Finally I Have a Budget to Support Open Sourcehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/spacebug/~3/irUs3EujZh0/
http://spacebug.com/finally-i-have-budget-to-support-open-source/#commentsFri, 19 Aug 2011 20:36:59 +0000http://spacebug.com/?p=651

I think that open source, even if still not fully main stream, constantly improves our lives, even for those of us who are not a tech-geek like me.

Now things are radically different, it is now part of my job to support and ensure the success of open source in my region. Now I finally have some budget to do what I love and believe in.

Last week was my first (and very humble) contribution in August penguin, a local open source event. The organizers did not want us to officially sponsor the event but agreed that I bring food
So here it starts, my first monetary contribution to an open source initiatives. I hope and plan to support multiple events and projects in order to drive a more open future.